The Alumni Wall Problem
Students are not looking for heroes, they’re looking for reassurance
Every business school has them. Long corridors lined with framed alumni portraits. Names. Job titles. Company logos. A carefully selected quote that sounds suspiciously like it was written by someone who has never met the person in the photo.
These walls are supposed to motivate students. In practice, they mostly embarrass them.
I’ve talked about this with students many times, across different schools, different programs, different years. The reaction is remarkably consistent. They don’t feel inspired. They feel patronized. They know exactly how these people were selected. A tiny group of outliers pulled from thousands of graduates and presented as if this is the default outcome of effort and ambition. They also know, instinctively, that most of the quotes aren’t real. They’re marketing artifacts, not lived words.
What schools fundamentally misunderstand is what students are actually searching for when they look at those walls. They’re not looking for heroes. They’re looking for reassurance.
Reassurance that a meaningful life does not require a C-level title. That success isn’t limited to those born into the right networks or polished into visibility early. That it’s possible to build a career with balance, curiosity, dignity, and space for life outside work. They’re looking for examples that feel reachable, not curated.
Business schools borrowed this idea from institutions like the military, but stripped it of its logic. The military doesn’t glorify the single general. It shows paths, roles, progression, and notably - service. Business schools kept the frames and lost the meaning.
If schools insist on keeping these walls, they need to radically change what they show. Not just the former CEO, but the alum who became a project manager and stayed there because they liked their evenings. The graduate who tried consulting, hated it, left after eighteen months, and rebuilt a life that actually fits. The one who started a company, shut it down quietly, then found meaning inside a mid sized organization. The teacher. The freelancer. The person who took a pay cut to move countries. The one who paused their career for family. The one who never climbed very high and never wanted to. Show plateaus. Show detours. Show years where nothing spectacular happened except learning how to live. Let alumni write their own words, in their own tone, without polishing the doubt out of it. Variety is not a weakness here. It is the message.
What these walls should show instead are ordinary lives. Not ideals to chase, but paths you can recognize yourself in. People who chose differently and are still doing just fine.
And to the students who might be reading this: if those walls make you feel like you’re already behind, you’re not. Your life will not follow a script, it will not fit in a frame, and it does not need a title to be legitimate. You are allowed to take your time, change direction, and define success on your own terms.
And that’s not a failure. That’s the whole point.